Cities and Ambition

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Most of the time when I try to talk about what frustrates me about living in Slovenia, it just comes out in a big blob of anger and resentment towards the country and its inhabitants, but that's not really what I want to say. What I really want to express is what programmer and essayist Paul Graham writes about so eloquently in his piece "Cities and Ambition".

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An excerpt:

How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer seems to be: a lot. You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you'd be able to transcend your environment. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference. But if you look at the historical evidence, it seems to matter more than that. Most people who did great things were clumped together in a few places where that sort of thing was done at the time.

You can see how powerful cities are from something I wrote about earlier: the case of the Milanese Leonardo. Practically every fifteenth century Italian painter you've heard of was from Florence, even though Milan was just as big. People in Florence weren't genetically different, so you have to assume there was someone born in Milan with as much natural ability as Leonardo. What happened to him?
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No matter how determined you are, it's hard not to be influenced by the people around you. It's not so much that you do whatever a city expects of you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do.

Steering My Life

Since coming back from Berlin, I've been very frustrated with Slovenia and Slovenian people for all myriad of valid and invalid reasons.

I am having a breakthrough here now. A breakthrough that I've had many times before in other situations, but always forget to re-apply:

You get out what you put in.

I need to open myself up to this place more. I am not sure what that is going to mean, but I hope that putting that intention out there will make it more clear.

What you plug into your inner GPS is where you will arrive in your life.
- Ian Lawton

I'll keep you posted!

Learnt

Study: Black children 3 times more likely to drown (click to read the article)


I just came across this interesting article on this sad but true fact alongside the exciting news about black swimmer and new Olympic medal winner Cullen Jones. I am so proud that I finally bit the bullet and learn how to swim. I will have to donate money to Cullen's new initiatives to get the rest of our kids to hop in the pool. It's important and moreover swimming is fun!

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This also reminds me to mention that in addition to swimming class and driving lessons*, I took a language class this summer. Yes, I did the Center for Slovene as A Second Language's One Week Intensive Language Course and I actually learned a lot of stuff and got to ask all my burning questions. I am still struggling with grammar but it is MUCH improved and now I have a one page xerox to look at and immediately identify my mistakes. I have structure. I also have the memories of my great little class. Aww, aren't we cute little students?




Thanks to tecaj friend Tatjana for the photos!



*I've pretty much stopped the driving lessons now and have instead became a forced chauffeur to The Captain and some of our friends. I've even driven alone a few times. Immersion is the key!